


The Heart and the Head

by nimmieamee (orphan_account)



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, mentions of Cheryl Blossom/Josie McCoy, mentions of Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 12:53:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18638524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: Nana Rose had said, “The best of you is your heart, my child.”





	The Heart and the Head

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before season two aired, when we hadn't even met Toni yet. My recipient in the Riverdale fic swap had asked for Cheryl and magical realism, so I tried my hand at it before giving up and going with another prompt about Alice. This was probably for the best. I ended up not liking season two, and especially not being all that into its depiction of Cheryl, Cherosie, or Choni. That said, I do like some aspects of this, so I am releasing it into the wild.

When Cheryl was seventeen, her father murdered her brother, she burned down her house, she won three cheer championships, she suffered four separate bouts of amnesia, she lingered in a coma for a week and was sent to a mental hospital for a two, she tried twice to commit suicide, she managed to valiantly save her own life when she was trapped at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, she staged a hostile takeover of the maple company, she was unjustly jailed after Hiram Lodge staged his own takeover following her takeover, she was released and joined a commune that turned out to be a cult, she married and then murdered the cult leader, she was haunted by a very beautiful ghost, and she gave away her heart.

The heart thing happened early on. And once she'd passed her heart off, she didn't expect to see it again. Among all the cults, cheer-leading victories, amnesiac spells, and hostile takeovers, the heart thing felt like a footnote.

But one night she received a mysterious note telling her to come to Pop's. As soon as she sat down at a booth, the heart came scuttling across the floor, making straight for her. Its eight ugly legs bent at unnatural angles, letting it cling to the plastic booths and jump across the chrome tabletops. It launched itself at her, and if she hadn't moved very fast and snapped, " _Down_ , you second-rate etsy bauble," it would have sunk its pin into her hand or something.

"Second-rate etsy bauble?" said Jughead Jones, sliding into the booth across from her. "What happened to, 'that'll keep you in burgers and S T-shirts?'"

Cheryl hadn't said how many burgers and S t-shirts.

"So I never really supported your boundless quest for saturated fats and thrift store rags," Cheryl said, rolling her eyes. "Sue me."

She expected Jughead to ask what it was she'd given him. Normal brooches didn't react the way this one did. But she didn't think Jughead was the sort of person who could identify just what made this one so different.

Cheryl's luck being what it was, he was that kind of person.

He said, "I don't think you should have given me your heart. It doesn't even like me. It keeps trying to go for my friend Toni instead."

"Tony?" Cheryl said. "I doubt that."

"Toni's a she," said Jughead.

-

Clifford’s heart had been stored in the mansion, which was why the mansion had had to burn. Penelope’s she'd stored in a set of shiny diamonds in a lockbox in the bank. Jason's had been in a certain heirloom ring, but then Clifford had gone and somehow shoved it back in Jason's body so he could kill him properly.  
After Jason died, but before they'd discovered that it was Clifford who'd done it, Cheryl, being Cheryl, started moving hers around erratically. She was trying to keep it safe. She knew perfectly well who Jason had meant to give the ring to, which made her think that tweaked-out Polly Cooper had somehow figured out it was a heart, and that meant that anyone could figure it out. 

"It's in here now?" her mother would say, prodding at a Vixen t-shirt or a tube of lipstick or something. " _Cheap_ , Cheryl. How fittingly cheap of you."

Going heartless was the Blossom way.

-

Josie knew about the heart. But Josie, being Josie, was unlikely to tell anybody. Josie kept a cool distance from nearly everyone, so secrets were more or less safe with her.

"Okay, okay," she'd said, waving a hand around at Pop's (a pre-cult, murder, amnesia, or arson Pop's). "What you're saying is you -- and your brother, and your mom, and your dad -- you've all pulled your hearts out and stored them somewhere else?"

"It's Blossom family tradition," Cheryl had said coolly. 

Josie had spared her an _are you serious?_ kind of look. Cheryl took in the large eyes, fragile cheekbones, perfect pointed face. 

If Cheryl had, you know, still possessed her heart, all of these details would have been filed away inside that pit of weakness. Slender, feline Josie McCoy, the only other girl in town to routinely pull rank and not give a shit. 

_Excuse me. Do you know who my mother is? Who I am?_

"I'm telling you because I love you," Cheryl tried.

Josie rolled her eyes.

"How can you love somebody if you don't have a heart?"

Actually, that was easy. What you did was stick the love somewhere else -- in your your nerves or your stomach or something. Cheryl had kept all her affection for Josie in her brain, so it wouldn't be too affected by the whistling emptiness where her heart should be.

"If you don't believe me, just come out and say it," Cheryl said.

"Oh, I believe you," Josie said. "And you know I love you. You're my girl, Cheryl. But your parents are opposing my mom's reelection--"

"That's not their fault," Cheryl had said. "They don't have _hearts_ \--"

"You know what my mom's given up to get where she has?" Josie said. "When she was young, any time she told people what she really thought about this town, they'd tell her she was inappropriate. She was unprofessional. Too angry. So she gave up telling them. Gave up her voice, I mean. People like her better this way."

Cheryl stared at her. Josie sighed.

"What I'm trying to say," Josie said carefully, "is that you don't have the heart I need you to have, to put me and my mom first. And I need somebody who's going to put us first. Because she doesn't have a working voice anymore, Cheryl. _I'm_ her voice."

Without a heart, being dumped hurt twice as much. Because the rage and pain went into that empty cavity in her chest and just filled it up.

"You don't get to dump me--" Cheryl said, voice rising dangerously.

"Who's dumping?" Josie said smoothly. "This is a mutual break-up. You're my girl. I'm yours. But you don't have enough heart for me. And I have too much voice for you."

She was so distant and cool about it that it made sense, this idea that Josie wasn't just Josie. Did Cheryl know who she _was_ , even? She was the Mayor's daughter. She was always speaking for two people. 

The Blossoms went heartless, sure, but the McCoys swapped their voices around, so no wonder Josie understood the heart thing. 

-

Cheryl had told no one after Josie, which was just as well. No one else would have understood. 

Shortly after the breakup, Polly Cooper confronted Cheryl in the Vixens' locker room. 

"Why did you ridicule my sister in front of everybody?" Polly demanded. "It's one thing to not want her on the Vixens, Cheryl, but to say she was fat--"

Polly too had, here and there, curves and dimples. And long, wheat-colored hair, and clear blue eyes, a living doll. Cheryl might not have had a heart, but she'd still had _want_. The only trouble was that the want couldn't fill her up properly. There was a clear and evident gap in Cheryl's circulatory system. She couldn't pump her want to the right places. 

"Haven't you heard, you dumb cow?" Cheryl told Polly. "I'm heartless."

-

Though, okay, _Toni_ explained a lot. 

Cheryl had wondered why she'd kept having vivid hallucinations of a doe-eyed, leather-clad South Side Serpent ghost. In the mental hospital. At the bottom of the mine shaft. Cheering her on when she held a gun to the Blossom Industries board chair's head and made him declare her sole heir to the entire maple fortune.

"You showed up at the drag race," Jughead explained. "Or a shimmering, terrifying ghost of you did, frightening the Ghoulies and giving me and Toni the win. So thanks for that, I guess. But it took us a while to figure out it wasn't actually you. You'd been sent to Hedkase Asylum. But your heart wanted Toni to win."

Cheryl's empty breast staggered away from the memory of Hedkase Asylum and the many long hours spent going over her escape plan with the lively spectral form of Toni ( _Topaz_ , her brain supplied), and effortlessly redirected her attention elsewhere.

"You spent the year drag-racing?" she said.

For months, she'd had to put up with Archie Andrews and Betty Cooper's endless discussions of _poor Juggie_. Poor Juggie, who'd been forced out of the North Side. Poor Juggie, who was never credited for helping solve Jason's murder. Poor Juggie, the walking American underclass, robbed of opportunities and forced to turn to a life of a crime.

Clearly Archie and Betty were bleeding hearts. Jughead's year sounded pedestrian compared to the year Cheryl had had.

But Jughead just looked at her coolly. Splayed his large white hands out and counted down on them, sarcastic yet pleased.

"I spent the year drag racing, forced into joining my dad's gang, escaping my dad's gang, moving to Toledo, forced into joining Toledo's gangs, unjustly jailed, stalked by Ethel Muggs' evil twin, sent undercover by the CIA, put into witness protection, lost my memory twice, mistakenly believed I was my twin, was forced to join his gang, developed an addiction to a new street drug, had to go to rehab, uncovered a plot to get addicts hooked on soup, escaped rehab, almost had to marry a girl who claimed she was pregnant with my baby but then it turned out to be Hiram Lodge's baby--"

The vacancy inside Cheryl's chest thrummed with irritation. How could you even claim you'd been _forced_ to join a gang if you did it three times?

"So?" she said. "Is this why you called me here? Put it in your manuscript and shop it to a trashy publisher. I'm not your therapist."

"I called you here because, even with all that, the weirdest thing that has happened to me all year is Cheryl Blossom giving me her heart," Jughead said pointedly. " _Why_ , Cheryl?""

Okay, a valid enough question. 

There had been three reasons.

1\. Anyone who would let himself be publicly shamed for his father's crimes was probably not going to use her heart against her.

2\. There probably wasn't anything he could do with it. Her heart wouldn't like Jughead. Nothing in her reacted to him like that. Honestly, it was an exhausting intellectual exercise even trying to consider what people found appealing about whole Jughead's pale, nervy vagabond schtick. 

3\. She hadn't needed her heart in order to sink to the bottom of the Sweetwater and lie there forever. In fact, not having her heart increased her odds of remaining poetically frozen at the bottom of the river-bed, never rotting, a testament to Jason's memory.

Yes, she'd fully intended to commit suicide. But suicide Blossom-style, a literally heartless act. If you killed yourself but left behind your heart, who knew what might happen? You might become an eternally beautiful a time capsule. You might some day wake up and take vengeance on the town. Or at least make an elderly Ginger and Tina feel really bad for the way they'd treated you.

Anyway, none of this was Jughead Jones' business. Cheryl scooped up her heart and pinned it onto her jacket. 

"It doesn't matter, since I'm taking it back," she told him. "As for this Toni--"

What _about_ this Toni? For most of the year, Toni had been a constant companion, if one that signaled deep mental illness and so permitted Hiram Lodge to use a legal technicality to rob Cheryl of the maple fortune. True, Cheryl had frequently criticized Toni's garish tattoos, her questionable eating habits, her South Side hair. But Cheryl's heart liked Toni. She could feel it thrumming with heat -- _see! See what I brought you when you thought you could shove me away?_

"You should--" Jughead said awkwardly. "You should talk to her. She wanted to come today, but she was busy. And what she has to say to you, and what I have to say to you -- those are two different things."

"A shadowy impression of her has been intermittently visiting me for almost twelve months now and she couldn't come in person?" Cheryl said, rolling her eyes. "Rude."

"Is it even going to last?" Jughead said. "You don't have a heart, Cheryl. Maybe if you put it back inside your body--"

"I slapped you once. I will slap you again," Cheryl said. "You have zero business inquiring about what goes inside my body--"

"No, see, that's what I want to know," Jughead said slowly. "How to fix this kind of thing."

Without warning, he removed his hat.

Only for a few seconds. But it needed a warning. Sure, Cheryl's eyes didn't see the strangeness. All they saw was that shabby, bargain basement Brando aesthetic he was going for these days. But beneath that, or behind it, or coexisting with it -- there was something _else_. Something too much, like trying to grasp a whole galaxy in a few instants. Too many pieces firing off inside his cranium. An impression of cracks laid on top of his dark hair, and in the cracks too much brightness and activity.

Cheryl hardly had time to scream before he was jamming the hat back on his head.

"Okay," she said, when her heart's legs had stopped curling in fear and she had gathered up the rest of herself. "I know I've said in the past that that beanie is an assault on those of us with better taste, but you should never, ever remove it."

Jughead rolled his eyes.

"It's not just me under there," he said. "That's the thing. I think enough for two. And trust me, it's a problem."

" _How_ \--"

"Someone gave me their wits," Jughead said. "A long time ago. When it looked like I'd need to _have_ all the wits, okay? But now I need to figure out how to give them theirs back."

-

Nana Rose had said, “The best of you is your heart, my child.”

Nana Rose had said, “It is the weakest organ, child, squishy and bloated with blood, slimy chambers pumping impotent breath into the rest of you.”

Nana Rose had said, “It is the easiest thing to slice it out, to pull it from the chest and store it somewhere else.”

But neither Nana nor any other Blossom had ever told Cheryl how one went about putting something like this _back_. Obviously, Clifford had known. But Cheryl had gone and burned his heart up, so it wasn't like Clifford could tell her. 

-

It was easy enough to determine who Jughead Jones had left completely witless, because Jughead only had two friends and only one of those friends very obviously didn't have a brain. 

Not that this had stopped Archie Andrews from having a very busy year. He'd sobbed by his father's bedside. He'd picked up a mask somewhere and fought crime at night in order to avenge Fred Andrews' injuries. He'd cinched four football championships for Riverdale High and been named 'Best Prom King of All Time.' He'd won Battle of the Bands and then War of the Bands and then Apocalpytic Nuclear Armageddon of the Bands (this perplexed Cheryl, so she'd been very happy to play the villain and point out that all he'd done was offer two mediocre renditions of John Mayer's 'You're Beautiful' and one song about teenage friendship that sounded suspiciously like 'You're Beautiful.')

When Cheryl cornered him at school the next day and said, "Archie, I need your assistance," he pushed his backpack over one shoulder, looked confused, and said, "Sure, Cheryl."

Even Cheryl knew that was the wrong answer. When a Blossom demanded your help, you were supposed to have enough sense to turn them down. People with actual recorded mental deficiencies had enough sense to turn them down. Only Archie said yes right away and then, ten minutes later, started to look concerned.

He asked, "Is this another maple tapping thing?" after Cheryl had dragged him into the music room. 

"I don't have Blossom Industries anymore," Cheryl snapped. "I'm a religious leader now. Hiram Lodge stole the maple fortune, remember?"

Archie blinked at her. 

"Was this, like, when he got those thugs to destroy my guitar right before Battle of the Bands?" he said. 

Archie had performed using an air guitar, a shiny smile, and a lot of heart. Principal Weatherbee had called him a moral example and a pinnacle of strength. 

"This is about love, Archie," Cheryl said, lying through her lipstick-ringed, gleaming teeth. "I need your help to find my true love."

Archie had no wits, so he bought this.

**Author's Note:**

> I think the original plan was to have something vaguely wrong with every single teen in town, a decision that would have been spot-on for the canon if I'd finished this fic! Since I didn't, though, anyone who likes the concept can feel free to run with it.


End file.
